The doors to the new location officially opened Wednesday morning, roughly a month after its ribbon cutting and one week after Holland served her first batch of chicken and waffles in San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

Holland’s new Oakland Brown Sugar Kitchen seats 85 and has a full bar that wraps around an open kitchen. Overall, the restaurant is a sleek, modern-looking space with dark leathers and wood finishes, all of which are design quirks vastly different from the more rustic spot Holland had on Mandela Parkway in West Oakland for 10 or so years.

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As for the menu, Holland is sticking to what made the brand iconic — buttermilk fried chicken, gumbo, catfish — but it’s just being served in a more aesthetically refined setting. (See the menu here).

Today’s debut comes a week after Holland opened Brown Sugar Kitchen in the Ferry Building. However, the Brown Sugar Kitchen expansion has been a long time coming for Holland. She announced that Brown Sugar Kitchen was going to expand to Uptown Oakland way back in summer 2017, followed a few months later with the Ferry Building plans. “My goal has been the same,” Holland said at the time. “I want to be the Shake Shack of soul food.”

Tanya Holland helps her staff prepare food at her restaurant, Brown Sugar Kitchen, in Oakland in November 2017. The restaurant has since closed and a new outpost has opened in Uptown Oakland.

Photo: Mason Trinca / Special to The Chronicle

In May 2018, Holland announced plans to close and re-open the original Brown Sugar Kitchen in West Oakland as test kitchen concept, though a few months later, she decided to close it for good. “It’s just time to move on as a chef,” she said at the time. “There’s a lot of reasons, but I felt like the restaurant was no longer challenging me. At this point in my career, I want to do something that’s going to be new and challenging for me.”

There’s more on the way, too. Brown Sugar Kitchen is one of a group of 17 new food and drink locations to sign on at the Oakland International Airport.

Justin Phillips joined the San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He extensively covered the growth and transformation of Southwest Louisiana’s multibillion dollar energy sector. Justin also served as a columnist for the American Press where he won a Louisiana-Mississippi Associated Press Media Editors award for his weekly food column. In the past, Justin spent time working in the newsrooms of the Contra Costa Times, the Tri Valley Herald, and the Oakland Tribune. He studied journalism at Louisiana Tech University.